Asylum of Loons: Charming Names from the Bird World - Hardcover

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Doves, a dole, true love, or pitying of... As doves’ soft coo has long been associated with mourning, it’s perhaps no surprise that when English borrowed the French word for mourning, deuil, and morphed it into “dule” or “dole,” this was the chosen collective noun for doves. Doves are also often associated with purity and piety―the latter word is the root of the word “pity.” In other instances, doves are seen as symbols of faithfulness, hence “true love.” Since early lists of terms of venery referred to these birds as either doves or turtledoves, we get alliterative versions on those lists, like this: “A Trewloue of Turtuldowys.”

Ducks, a paddling, badling, raft, team, or safe... Ducks have earned a host of collective nouns, including different nouns depending on where the group of ducks has been sighted. In the water, they’re a “paddling” or “raft,” or the oft-copied misspelling of paddling: “badling.” On land, they are a “safe,” perhaps reflecting humans’ attitudes toward land and water more than ducks’. And in flight, ducks are a “team,” a word that in its original Germanic sense meant “offspring” and was used particularly for ducklings. The earliest uses of “team” as a collective noun for a group of ducks in flight go back to the 1400s.

Dunlins, a fling of... Dunlins often form flocks of great numbers that fly in a tight formation with a highly complicated, highly coordinated set of movements that quickly “fling” them through the sky.

Eagles, a convocation or aerie of... An “aerie” is an eagle’s nest. A “convocation” is a group called together in a formal way, often for a ceremony, whether academic or religious―and this seems to befit a bird with such a stern, serious expression that we’ve given it weighty, official symbolic meanings.